In an audio and/or video apparatus, the data to be played are often arranged in tracks so that the user can have a quick access to the part he wants to listen or watch. The track corresponds for instance to a song in an audio apparatus and to a part of a movie in a video apparatus.
For the user's convenience, it has been further proposed to play only selected tracks in a preferred order according to a play list. Before being played, the play list has to be determined by the user by a selection among available tracks. Several methods have already been proposed to create and modify a play list.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,986,979 describes a method for manipulating a play list without referring display. This method may be of interest when it is desirable not to rely on a display, for instance in a car.
Methods using a display to view and manipulate a play list have been proposed, notably for personal computers (PC), as described for instance in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,118,450 and 6,356,971 or patent application WO 00/28 396. To modify the play list, these solutions use conventional PC techniques, such as the “drag-and-drop” feature.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,872,568 discloses one possible method for determining user-list of values from pre-defined values. In a first mode (FIG. 4), this document proposes to highlight the selected values in the total list of pre-defined values. This solution however cannot be used for a play list where the order of tracks to be played can be changed by the user. FIG. 6 shows a second mode where it is possible to remove a value from the user-list box by highlighting it in the same box and activating a screen area labelled “Delete”.
The invention aims at a new method for modifying a list of items selected from a set of available items, notably a play list taken from available tracks, which is easy to handle for the user and gives him a clear view of what he is doing.